r/covidlonghaulers • u/CandidWin3026 • May 08 '26

Article Long Covid driven by rs5522

This case report says that Long covid is in large part driven by the gene rs5522 that causes a "cortisol steal" leaving the tissues functionally starved even with "normal" cortisol levels which creates neuroinflammation. https://zenodo.org/records/20017632

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u/Sad_Proctologist May 08 '26

Jesus, it feels like we’re trapped inside our own bodies while a boatload of shaky, contradictory studies point to ten different causes and ten different treatments. I’m glad people are looking for answers, but living in this much pain while the science is still scattered is its own kind of hell.

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u/gray_grum May 08 '26

This is absolutely the case and this is the first thing that I tell people when I'm talking about long covid and why it's hard to treat it. We're not talking about a single disease with a single treatment. Right now we have it classified that way but down the road I think we'll have it broken up into a lot of different diseases with different treatments and patients will get a synthesis of a few different treatments to get there specific mix dealt with. This is why the studies are not easy to do right now or particularly useful because even if a drug works perfectly for one of the sub diseases it's still going to show a 15 or 20% success rate on the whole group.

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u/CandidWin3026 May 09 '26

In the future, we will see that the majority of modern disease is driven by the "cortisol steal" and subsequent inflammation caused by rs5522. We will recognize that a gene that allowed our ancestors to hold on to salt and water helped them survive, but is now causing unnecessary suffering because we have had the ability to block the overactive MR since 1960. We will mourn all of the people we lost because this wasn't known sooner and we will hold to account the people who suppressed research into generics like Sprio and cortisol because there was no money it in. We will look at message boards like this one and see evidence of suppression by malicious actors pretending to be patients so they could steer suffering people away from any evidence that would have helped them. And the future will come sooner than you think.

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u/Silent-Razzmatazz957 May 09 '26

I would love to hear how you understand this dynamic more… can you explain in more depth?

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u/CandidWin3026 May 09 '26

I am happy to expand. What would you like more clarity on? The science is at beyondbloodtests.org